The Friday prior, I received an email from the Dean's Office, telling me that my tenure dossier was being sent to the APT Committee (Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure). This meant that my tenure case would be evaluated again at the college level, by a committee of 11 members across departments in CAS. This is something that I anticipated—my Chair told me that sometime in February the second round of assessment will take place. A mixture of nervousness and excitement. I was allowed to read the Chair's letter and the non-confidential part of the dossier, which are all reassuring. I didn't know when the meeting and voting will happen—sometime in the following two weeks, I thought.
Then lots of things happened in the past week, which distracted my attention. Thursday was a particular hectic day, as I was busily working on a matter of house mortgage with Igel. I was also going to give a Zoom talk next day, so didn't think of the tenure vote at all.
Around 6:30pm, when we had a break after an intense day of phone calls and calculation of numbers, I suddenly saw a message on my phone, "Good news! Do you have time for a quick call?" I was pretty sure that I saw this message early in the day, but ignored it because I thought it came from an aggressive broker—they often start the message with "Good news!" Only now did I realize that it actually came from my Chair.
I immediately realized what this was about. The meeting must have taken place early today, a bit earlier than I thought. My Chair called me in a minute, and told me that my case received an unanimous yes. "It is an easy case and the meeting was rather short," he related. He said something else, like praises for my work, some clarification questions from the committee, etc. But I was too overwhelmed to hear them clearly. Igel was standing nearby, eyes full of tears. My response to the Chair was a bit too effusive and dull—many thanks, appreciation, feeling speechless, and the like. Honestly, I feel lucky to have an extremely supportive Chair. From the time he became the Chair in 2019, his support for me and Igel has been tremendous, not just on my tenure case, but also on the complicated issue of my green card application that has consumed me a good amount of time in the past year. Maybe the result would be the same should I have a different Chair, but a good Chair makes the journey much more pleasant.
It was a strange moment. Although this is a big deal—the APT decision is crucial since the rest is basically a bureaucratic routine, and the result is not a surprise, I couldn't feel the same level of euphoria compared to the official publication of my book last summer or the notification of the departmental vote on my case last October. The main reason, I guess, is that at least in my school, the APT decision usually follows the departmental vote, so I didn't anticipate a surprise. Plus, I don't know the majority of people on the APT committee, unlike the situation for the departmental vote, so it is an emotionally more detached process. The timing is interesting, as if this is a godly message: just as I was doing something most mundane and uninteresting—dealing with house mortgage, I received the positive affirmation of something I have pursued for almost two decades, something I call dream. This is rather ironic, isn't it?
Perhaps this coincident is sending a signal to me: it is about time to change the mode of living, from a laser-focused effort on securing my tenure and a living still like a graduate student to a more comprehensive and multifaceted life of a true adult shouldering more responsibilities beyond my own interest. Doing something I like is the most rewarding thing in my life, and I often find myself lucky to have the luxury of time and resources to pursue my goal and postpone other more mundane and routine things in life. It is about time to change that—I can delay those necessities, but cannot shun them forever. The temptation and momentum of remaining a perpetual spoiled child is high, but that is not realistic or even desirable. I must have a broader perspective of life and adjust my way of living accordingly.
It is a strange moment also in the sense of what is happening in the world. The Winter Olympics just ended in Beijing, yet what attracted more people's attention, at least in my circle of friends, is the chained woman from the Feng County. The absurdity of the tragedy and the anger it evoked among people is heart-wrenching. Compared to that, my little good news appears quite trivial, even meaningless. There seems to be a huge gap between my world and that world. Again, as an intellectual and a conscientious human being, what can I do to go beyond the self-fulfillment in my small, comfortable niche to contribute to the public good, either in this country or in China? Something to think about after the tenure.
